Today is Muhammad Iqbal’s 136th birthday, which was celebrated with much revelry and reverence. We are swimming in a very different historical moment. We live in a time when, sadly, “Muslim thinker” will strike many as an oxymoron. Yet Muhammad Iqbal was arguably one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.

Why, then, attack Gülen and attempt to portray him as an extremist when one of the cornerstones of Gülen’s Sufi-inspired approach is his teachings about the principle of hoşgörü (i.e, seeing the good in others) and dialogue?

Want to know the difference between hajj and halal? Here is a short glossary of some of the most commonly used words and phrases in Islamic religion and culture.

Allah

The Arabic word for “god.”

Conspiracies of “militants” being trained at a Pennsylvania retreat that houses Gulen are debunked, though unfortunately space and weight is given to anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobes Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson, whose commentary is near worthless on these matters.

A town in upstate New York is trying to force a local Muslim religious community to dig up a small cemetery on its property and never bury anyone there again because it says it’s illegal.

A town in upstate New York is trying to force a local Muslim religious community to dig up a small cemetery on its property and never bury anyone there again because it says it’s illegal.

When asked why they resist moving the center to defuse critics who call its location near ground zero insensitive, for example, Mr. Abdul Rauf said that a move would anger Muslims overseas and endanger American troops.

Nothing could seem further from the furor over a proposed Islamic study center in Lower Manhattan than these scenes of devotion for a man who transformed the Persian-speaking areas of the Islamic world with poetry about love, humility, tolerance and the individual embrace of God.

Keller is a xenophobic pedagogue who dreamed up the idea for a Christian center near Ground Zero to further his hateful and inherently un-Christian message. How does mocking the Muslim religion in any way honor those who died on 9/11? Furthermore, how will a man who espouses such hatred help 9/11 families heal?

In a recent post, Spencer attempts to debunk a Washington Post article about common myths about mosques in America written by Edward E. Curtis IV. It is an excellent piece, but apparently that was too much for Spencer, and he inserts a whole host of mistruths to counter the realities of the WaPo article.